Title: Internet, schoolchildren and rural Pakistan: How to get community buy-in including for girls
Source: Association for Progressive Communications

Date (published): 10/03/2010
Date (accessed): 12/03/2010
Type of information: blog post
Language: English
On-line access: yes (HTML)
Abstract:
It was by coincidence that 29 year-old software developer Huda Sarfraz got involved in the Dareecha project. It was the first time the Centre for Research in Urdu Language Processing (CRULP) had directly taken on the social perspective of a project by taking technology to the people and the Lahore resident decided she would stay on and give it a try. Huda as part of Dareecha (meaning “window”) set about training school children and teachers from the rural Punjab to use the internet so that they could eventually create their own content.
And create content they did – with their new skills, students and teachers in rural villages created 57 new, locally-relevant school and community web sites, which they presented in a competition held by Dareecha in June and August 2009. The judging panel, comprised of government officials, academia and ICT experts couldn’t help but notice the strong presence of women and girls among the winners. This was a sign that the Gender Evaluation Methodology (GEM), an evaluation methodology the Dareecha team had used to compliment other planning methods for the project, had helped them get through to a segment of the population other more traditional planning methods may not have achieved: women and girls.